The priest offered a nod toward Donatello. “Donatello já começou a curar sua alma. Em breve, ele preencherá seu coração com a alegria que você buscou durante toda a sua vida. Mas isso só acontecerá se você permitir que ele o faça como seu marido.”
Donatello has already begun to heal your soul. Soon, he will fill your heart with the joy you’ve sought your entire life. But only if you allow him to do so as your husband.
I fought a huge smile and laugh, reminding myself this was a reverent moment. “Well, then we must not hinder what has been laid out in the stars.” And in the gris-gris I created. In speaking English I already knew the priest understood every word. After all, he’d been listening in on my conversation with the man he’d accused of healing my soul.
He was right.
Somehow, I knew that Donatello had orchestrated the entire setting as well as greasing several palms so we could bypass Brazilian law.
“Do you have everything you need, Father?” Donatello asked, barely offering the man a glance.
The priest motioned toward the two plain-clothed people to take their places.
“I do now. As required, there must be two witnesses.” The priest grinned when he noticed my gaze of amusement. “We do have our standards, Emmeline. Now, are we ready to proceed?”
When neither Donatello nor I answered immediately, the priest glanced from one to the other, obviously in no hurry.
Yet still amused at the crazy American couple.
“Yes,” I whispered for both of us.
“Ah, good. You have the rings. I’ll take them.”
In the next couple of minutes as we took our places, I thought about all the times I’d presented the wedding of my dreams in my mind. There wasn’t a little girl out there who hadn’t at least once thought about what her wedding day would be like. Perhaps for some, it would be a time of thought including violence given their hatred for holy matrimony.
I’d envisioned the white dress and the beautiful church, one similar to the St. Louis Cathedral located in the French Quarter. Deemed the oldest continually operating cathedral in the United States, my parents had mass there regularly.
My brothers and I had been baptized in the church.
Two brothers had gotten married within the hallowed halls.
It had been expected so would I, the well-attended celebration followed by a huge reception at one of the glorious hotels in the city. My parents would have gone all out, sparing no expense. Even in my father’s absence, Alexander had already earmarked money for the lavish event.
My, how things changed.
As the priest began with a Catholic prayer in Portuguese, Donatello and I remained silent, both staring into each other’s eyes. There were no gorgeous bouquets of flowers filling the church, the scent of roses filling the air.
There was no monarch train studded with Swarovski jewels to worry about tearing.
No restless audience to consider when planning all of what my brother Jaxon had called the Grand Poo-bah moments within the festivities.
And there were no four-hundred-dollar bottles of champagne waiting to be popped, served alongside six-hundred-dollar plates of food.
There were simply two people in hiding who’d tormented each other for years standing in front of a carved wooden altar located in a foreign country.
Two people who by all rights and family restrictions weren’t allowed to be together.
Two people who loved each other with all their hearts.
“Do you have the rings?” the priest asked.
“Yes,” Donatello answered and I could swear his voice was cracking.
“Then please proceed.”
As the love of my life placed the ring on my finger, I took a deep breath. Every nerve stood on end, seared from his touch as well as the understanding that we were no longer playing a game. We were getting married, forming a union that only death could alter.
But one that would exist far beyond the typical hands of time.
